


Four Things Fuzzies Obtained from Humans (and one thing humans got in return)

by Sholio



Category: Little Fuzzy series - Piper
Genre: Found Family, Fuzzies, Gen, Science Fiction, five things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 18:53:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which (among other things) it is discovered that switching a hunter-gatherer society's diet for high-calorie, high-carb processed food is a bad idea; that mountains are dangerous in the winter; and that sometimes, while focused on digging for one kind of treasure, you can discove something completely different and infinitely more valuable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four Things Fuzzies Obtained from Humans (and one thing humans got in return)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ButterChicken](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=ButterChicken).



> This takes place after "Little Fuzzy" and "Fuzzy Sapiens". I haven't read the third book and wasn't able to obtain it in time to write this story, so please forgive the inevitable divergences from canon that are bound to result! This could be seen as a slight AU, a "what if" taking place after the part of the series that was published in Piper's lifetime.

**1\. Sugar**

 

"Mummy Woof!"

Ruth raised her head from her screen, blinking for a moment as she switched mental gears from the Fuzzy IQ test results she was compiling, and looked down at the actual live Fuzzy tugging on her pants leg. "_Josso-aki esteefee_," Superego said clearly in human-audible tones, when he was sure he had her attention.

"What, you're hungry again?" Ruth frowned down at the Fuzzy who gazed back up at her with large limpid eyes. "You guys just had lunch." She cast a quick glance at the little chrono display in the corner of her screen to make sure she hadn't lost track of time, but she'd only parceled out their midday meal an hour ago.

"Hon-gee," Superego agreed. "_Josso-aki esteefee_, Mummy Woof?"

Ruth sighed and picked him up. "C'mon, let's go see about getting you a snack, I guess."

As she carried him into the kitchen, a thought occurred to her and she slid her free hand across his soft fur. It was difficult to see under the fur, but pretty obvious when one felt carefully -- Superego had picked up a hefty layer of padding over his ribs, curving out into a neat little paunch.

Ruth whistled softly. This was a problem she hadn't even considered. The Fuzzies were active little people, but the lifestyle of those living with humans was, by necessity, much more sedentary than that of wild Fuzzies -- especially the ones living in town.

"Esteefee?" Superego asked wistfully, reaching up to tug at her hair with a small hand.

"Just a little bit," Ruth said. She opened a fresh can and cut off a small corner of the golden cake inside.

Superego said something in Fuzzy too fast for her to follow, but she could get the gist of it.

"No, no more than that until dinner. You just ate. No more, Superego." Another thought occurred. "Don't tell the others, all right? I don't want to have to feed everyone. No share," she said firmly, pointing at the Extee-Three in his hand.

At his puzzled look, she felt instantly guilty. Fuzzies were sharers by nature; they didn't really seem to understand lying or secrets, and withholding food from one another was about as alien to a Fuzzy as any concept could be. And it wasn't like she wanted to inflict human values -- covetousness, acquisition -- on poor Superego or any of her little family. But she'd never get anything done if she stopped every five minutes to feed Fuzzies all afternoon.

"All right, here." She parceled out three more shares, touched each one. "Id, Superego, Complex. _So-josso._ Got it?"

Superego seemed to get it; he trotted out of the kitchen, nibbling on his own share and clutching the other Fuzzies' snacks in his other hand.

Ruth returned to her work, but her mind spun in circles the rest of the day.

She and Gerd had relocated to Mallorysport temporarily so that Ruth could help Claudette Pendarvis with her Fuzzy-adoption screenings, matching prospective "parents" to compatible Fuzzies and screening out people who were unstable, inflexible and otherwise unsuited. Once they got a set of screening algorithms up and running, she should be able to handle special cases over the communication network, but getting the system in place was the trick, and they'd figured it would be easier to rent a temporary place in Mallorysport than to fly back and forth between Alpha and Beta Continents all the time. Right now, though, Gerd was back down in Beta -- laboring away in the sunstone mines, as he put it, though actually he was mostly mapping things -- so it was just Ruth and the Fuzzies for the next few days. She missed the bustle of Holloway's Camp; it was strange to be isolated after getting used to having a steady parade of visitors (human and Fuzzy) trooping in and out of her office all the time. And, of course, it had to be strange for the Fuzzies too, though they'd settled in with relative calm. Her bunch had seen a number of moves in the short time they'd been with her, and this was just another trip to a strange Hagga place as far as they were concerned.

Beyond her niggling worry about ending up with a houseful of sedentary, tubby Fuzzies, though, she was starting to develop a specific worry about Superego. He was sluggish, she noticed, compared to the others. He didn't seem to feel ill -- at least, when she asked if he felt bad, he appeared not to understand the question -- but she'd been meaning to take her four over to play with Diamond anyway, and maybe she'd ask Lynne while she was there. The former pediatrician was in town from Beta for a few days, staying with Victor Grego in order to do medical check-ups for the growing Mallorysport Fuzzy population. Right now Lynne was the closest thing to a Fuzzy medical expert on Zarathustra; once the clinic at Holloway's Camp was fully operational she'd offer classes, but right now, it was all she could do to just keep her head above her workload.

Grego, as it turned out, wasn't home, and Sandra Glenn was out too -- probably with Ahmed, taking advantage of the opportunity to pawn Diamond off on another Fuzzy-sitter. So Ruth and Lynne had the place to themselves. Lynne offered her a drink, while the Fuzzies busied themselves with some of Diamond's many toys. Diamond had the very best toys; Grego's penthouse was a much-beloved vacation destination for all of the Fuzzies who'd had an opportunity to visit.

Lynne listened with a slight frown as Ruth described her concerns about Superego's health, and her Fuzzies' diet in general.

"Have you noticed any other symptoms?" Lynne asked. "Thirst, excessive urination, anything like that?"

"I haven't noticed, but I'll pay attention."

Lynne continued to frown in the direction of the Fuzzies. "I'd also like to take blood samples -- from Superego especially, but from all of them. Fasting would be best."

Ruth laughed. "Good luck with that! Eating is the thing they like best. I've had to lock the cabinet where I keep the ... you-know-what." Just mentioning the word Extee-Three often resulted in a cluster of Fuzzies around her knees. "And it probably won't be too long before they figure a way around that." The smile dropped off her face, seeing Lynne's concerned expression. "You're really worried. The symptoms you described -- what would it mean?"

"Diabetes," Lynne said.

Ruth sucked in her breath. "Oh, surely not! They're all so healthy. And Ext -- you-know-what is supposed to be good for you."

"It's an emergency field ration," Lynne corrected her. "It's calorie-dense, high-carb and fiber-poor. A human being could survive on the stuff for years without developing any nutritional deficiencies -- but you'd start having other problems. Constipation, tooth decay, and that's not to speak of the long-term effects of a diet like that ... or the fact that the nutritional content is calibrated for us humans, not for Fuzzies." She tossed back her drink almost angrily. "We've been so focused on the fact that the Fuzzies love the stuff; we just assume that they instinctively know what's best for them, ignoring the fact that any animal -- including humans -- is evolutionarily programmed to seek out the most calorie-dense foods in its environment by necessity. It's a known fact that human societies switching to a carbohydrate-rich diet from a diet high in fruits, vegetables and wild game see skyrocketing instances of diabetes, cancer and other ailments. I don't know why we thought the Fuzzies would be immune to those problems."

Ruth realized that she was working her cocktail glass back and forth in her hands; she made herself stop. "Should we stop feeding them Extee-Three?" Some of the Fuzzies glanced up hopefully at the word, but then returned to the big living-room screen, which they were engrossed in. "If we do that, we go back to the -- the titanium deficiency issue."

"I don't think you have to stop feeding it to them completely," Lynne said. "Just don't give them a steady diet of the stuff. Victor's been trying to ensure that Diamond has plenty of fruits, vegetables and other natural foods available, just on general principles -- kids love cake but you wouldn't feed them nothing else. Ironic that one of the least nurturing people I've met seems to be doing such a stellar job of caring for his Fuzzy, but then, that's Victor Grego; he's probably thought the whole thing over rationally, and made detailed lists and delegated them out to people."

Ruth squirmed, feeling like a terrible parent. She'd only been trying to do what was right. Everyone that she knew fed their Fuzzies nothing but Extee-Three. And after the discovery about their dietary titanium deficiency -- who would have thought that feeding them Extee-Three could be bad for them? She was a trained psychologist, though, damn it; she should have been able to figure this out.

Lynne must have seen the guilt on her face, because she patted Ruth on the arm. "Don't worry about it; everyone's been making the same mistake. It'll just be a matter of retraining people, and getting some titanium supplements produced; we can still give them the benefits of Extee-Three without the down side." She set her glass on the table. "Anyway, I'm still going to want those blood samples from Superego, and the rest of your Fuzzies while you're at it. I doubt if full-fledged diabetes could develop this quickly -- but I'm drawing on human studies again, of course. I keep doing that, forgetting that I'm dealing with an alien life form rather than human children."

Ruth looked over at the Fuzzies again. They were focused on the screen, playing some kind of game with handheld controllers. She'd have to find out which game and send it down for the Holloway Camp Fuzzies; they loved interactive games, though Jack would probably complain as usual.

"I think we all do," she said quietly.

* * *

**2\. Games**

 

Jack Holloway wished he could figure out who'd taught his Fuzzies about screen-games. It'd be nice to know who to blame.

He figured it was probably a toss-up between some enlisted Xerxes Base yahoo who'd thought it'd be a good way to keep six active and curious little strangers out of the public eye; or Victor Grego's Diamond, who had access to pretty much every sort of technology imported onto Zarathustra.

If it turned out to be Ruth, there'd be hell to pay. She thought it was hilarious, particularly his reaction to it, and had been sending down new games with every courier from Mallorysport. Jack looked forward to the day when she and Gerd came back home to Beta ... and stopped tempting his Fuzzies with their city ways.

Not that it wasn't kind of a relief that the Fuzzies had found a relatively safe way to occupy themselves. All the Fuzzies were planetary celebrities right now, and after everything that had happened with Novaes and Herckerd, Jack couldn't relax; every time his Fuzzies went out the door, he was afraid some Fuzzy poacher with a stun-gun was going to swoop down and snatch them.

George Lunt and his fledgling Native Protection Force were already getting nascent glimmerings of the black market that they'd all feared in the beginning.

"They just don't think it through, Jack," Lunt said over a beer, after listening to what was rapidly becoming Jack's standard rant about slavery and trafficking. "They don't realize that's what they're doing. I was up Mallorysport way yesterday -- had lunch with Ruth and Gerd. You know what I saw? A ten-year-old girl Fuzzy-hunting in one of the parks with a net. What am I supposed to do, try and execute a schoolkid for slave trading?"

"What'd you do?"

"Gave her a stern talking-to and confiscated her net. They don't know what they're doing, Jack."

"They'd better damn well learn." Jack had little use for people on his best days -- people in general, that is; he liked certain individuals just fine -- but his already cynical opinion of humanity had taken a few more hits lately. To most people on Zarathustra, the Fuzzies were just weird-looking little pets, and Jack didn't share the optimism of Ruth, Lunt and some of the others who thought they'd come around eventually and get used to the idea of sharing the sapient-lifeform club with people who looked like two-foot-high golden teddy bears.

The adoption center was starting to get off the ground, but in Jack's opinion, this was only making the problem worse rather than better; now that some people were able to get their hands on Fuzzies through legal channels, demand was skyrocketing and they couldn't supply them fast enough, let alone with the kinds of strict screening protocols that Claudette Pendarvis had in place. And it still felt uncomfortably like trafficking to him, no matter how often the Fuzzies insisted that they all wanted Hagga of their very own.

Lunt shook his head, and looked around. "Say, where are your Fuzzies, anyway? They're all okay, right?"

Jack snorted. "Oh, they're fine. Glued to the screen in the shed."

As if to illustrate, a muffled _yeek!_ of excitement could be heard outside.

Both of Lunt's brows had crawled towards his hairline. "You've got a screen in your shed?"

"I do now, because it's the only way I can get any sleep these days." Jack rose from the table, and made an elaborate after-you gesture. "Want to see?"

They stepped out into the center of the cluster of prefabs that used to be Jack's mining camp. Over the past weeks, it had morphed into a bustling hub of activity. There were always aircars coming and going, and a small tent city had sprung up to accommodate the Fuzzies who were still moving into the area as word spread about the Wonderful Place.

Right now, it was early evening. The last ruddy sunshine slanted through the few trees remaining around the camp. There were lights in the windows of the office building that housed the ever-growing Department of Native Affairs on Zarathustra, and beyond that, Lynne's clinic and the rest of the growing complex of buildings that was coming to be known all over Zarathustra as "Holloway's Camp".

Having a beer with an old friend at his kitchen table was a luxury, these days.

Lunt's eyes followed the wiring crudely strung from the roof of the main prefab to the shed. Jack had slapped it together in a hurry, knowing that the whole place would probably need to be rewired next week and then again the week after that, at the rate they'd been adding new prefabs lately. Of course, all of that was contingent upon Ben Rainsford managing to keep their funding coming while the Zarathustra Company got the government sunstone diggings up and running.

And guess which old prospector was front and center of that process, too? If he wasn't putting out fires in politics these days, he was tramping around up at the sunstone-rich cliffs that he and Gerd had found. He wished he could do more of the latter and less of the former, but he didn't like the way it took him away from the camp more and more. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had a quiet evening at home with just him and the Fuzzies. And with strangers coming into the camp every day now, he hated leaving them home alone.

The door of the shed was cracked slightly open, letting the evening air in, and a babble of high-pitched, excited voices out. Lunt started to peek through the crack, but Jack gave the door a little shove. "They don't mind company. Nifflheim, they'll probably hand you a controller and ask if you want to play too."

Prior to its current use as a Fuzzy lounge and rec room, the "shed" -- actually a small prefab along the same general lines of the others in the clearing -- had been used for tool and equipment storage. Hooks still hung on the walls. Jack's Fuzzies, along with about a dozen strangers, were sprawled around on pillows, towels and whatever else Jack had been able to find around the house to make them comfortable. The center of their attention was a nice, state-of-the-art screen that had been in the office until Jack confiscated it. At the moment Little Fuzzy and Cinderella had the controllers, twisting and leaning their whole bodies along with the avatars on screen, while the others cheered and yeeked and generally chattered among themselves. Jack didn't have his hearing aid at the moment -- he didn't carry it so much these days, since most of the Fuzzies who were accustomed to humans had learned to speak in the human hearing range -- so he couldn't distinguish more than an occasional word that happened to be pitched low enough to make out. Some of the new Fuzzies glanced up at them, and then went back to staring at the screen.

"What're they playing?"

"How should I know?" Jack said wearily. "Ruth and Gerd send up a new batch of games every chance they get. She thinks it's funny."

Lunt squinted at the screen. "Hey," he said, gesturing at a readout in the corner, "they're playing on the network. ZARATHUSCO1 -- that's almost got to be Grego's penthouse. They must be networked with Diamond, maybe others as well." Jack's bafflement must have shown on his face, because Lunt laughed. "You don't know a lot about screen-games, do you?"

"Never bothered with them," Jack said shortly. Even when he was a kid, he'd preferred swimming with his buddies or hunting deer in the woods back home.

Lunt chuckled and shook his head. "Your Fuzzies are more tech-savvy than you are. That's sad, old man. Sad."

Little Fuzzy had noticed them. He said something to Cinderella -- Jack wished that he'd thought to put in his hearing aid before leaving the house -- and then handed off the controller to Mamma and trotted over to slip out of the shed. Stretching, he looked up, his big eyes luminous in the growing dusk.

"Hey, buddy. You miss Pappy Jack?" Jack lifted Little Fuzzy to his shoulder.

Lunt eased the door shut, muffling the blurred chirping of Fuzzy voices. "Think it's good for 'em?"

"I don't think it's good for humans; who knows about Fuzzies?" Jack felt Little Fuzzy's soft sleepy weight pool on his shoulders. "But you can't stop a person from doing what they want to do, no matter how tall they are."

Light flared in the dusk as Lunt lit a cigarette. "Speaking of which, have Ruth and Lynne given you the lecture on Extee-Three yet?"

"Esteefee?" Little Fuzzy murmured sleepily into Jack's hair. Jack always wondered how much attention the Fuzzies paid to the conversations of the Hagga, the Big Ones. Probably more than the Big Ones realized, he mused. "I haven't talked to either of them lately. It's been a madhouse around here."

Lunt followed Jack as far as the doorstep. "Well, call Ruth or Lynne if you get the chance. I haven't paid a whole lot of attention -- my job's protecting their hides, not worrying about what they eat. But the two of 'em seem to think it's important. Something about Extee-Three maybe not being good for them."

"I thought we just got done figuring out they need to eat the stuff for their species' survival." Scientists, Jack thought; changed their minds quicker than the weather in the Cordilleras.

"Don't ask me, I just work here." Lunt slapped Jack's shoulder. "Night."

Jack watched Lunt and the bright spark of his cigarette mosey off in the direction of the aircar parking area, then shook his head and lifted Little Fuzzy off his shoulders. The little guy was a pliable, boneless mass. "Little Fuzzy, you want to go out to your family?" Jack asked. "Pappy Jack's going to eat and go to bed."

Little Fuzzy stretched and yawned. "Stay with Pappy Jack," he said, and then, blinking up coyly, "Esteefee?"

"Sure, why not?" Reluctantly, Jack thought that he really ought to find out what Ruth had to say about Extee-Three. Mallorysport was three hours earlier than Holloway's Camp, so Ruth was probably still working; he could call her later. Besides, they'd been feeding the Fuzzies Extee-Three for months now, so it couldn't be anything too urgent. He had a vague idea what Ruth might be on about, though -- no matter how safe the lab techs claimed it was, you never really knew how an extraterrestrial was going to react to a particular human-made food until you'd been feeding it for a while. "On second thought, why don't you have a little of Pappy Jack's dinner. Got a nice veldbeest steak thawing. It's good."

"Okay," Little Fuzzy agreed complacently, burrowing into Pappy Jack's arms.

* * *

**3\. Clothing**

 

It rarely snowed in Mallorysport, but sometimes storms blew in over the ocean. Victor Grego stood on the terrace of his penthouse -- once a small rooftop garden, more recently converted into a Fuzzy play-park -- with his head tilted back, watching the novelty of snowflakes whirling over the city's lights. Around him, the flowerbeds had been tucked in and covered, the more sensitive ornamentals taken away by the gardener to survive the cooler weather in cozy greenhouses. The child-sized playground equipment around him was made new and strange by a soft blanket of fresh snow. It'd all melt away in the morning, he was sure, but he enjoyed seeing his city like this -- soft-edged and cloaked in fairy-tale beauty.

Grego glimpsed movement out of the corner of his eye, and looked around to see Diamond padding out on the terrace to join him. At least, he assumed it was Diamond. There weren't any other Fuzzies in the apartment. But Diamond had wrapped himself in one of Grego's shirts, so that little showed of him but a tuft of hair at the top and a single bright eye peeking out. The shirttails dragged behind him through the snow.

"What's this, Diamond?" Grego crouched down. The shirt was fine Baldurian silk, imported at great cost, and he knew that he really ought to be squeezing every cent, considering the current state of the company's assets. He should probably be angry. Yet the picture that Diamond presented was so striking that he could only laugh. Fuzzies didn't know about fine silk shirts, and the entire concept of money was foreign to them.

"Is co-ahd, sonowwah." Diamond pronounced "cold" and "snow" carefully in Lingua Terra, as close as he could, then switched back to Fuzzy, pitched at human hearing range. "The Hagga wear this," he explained. "Smart idea. Less cold."

"Diamond has fur, though."

Diamond shrugged, an expressive gesture obviously learned from the humans.

"Don't worry," Grego said. "You can have the shirt."

Diamond plucked at the fabric. "Diamond's?"

"Yes, Diamond's." Grego reached out to see if Diamond wanted up. After a moment's thought, Diamond accepted. Diamond wasn't as fond of being carried around or held as most of the Fuzzies tended to be -- he had a strong independent streak, possibly because of mistreatment at the hands of Novaes and Herckerd. He seemed content enough, though. The thought had occurred to Grego that perhaps Diamond simply recognized that Grego himself wasn't a particularly cuddly kind of guy.

In any case, Diamond seemed to appreciate it now. The soaked coattails left a wet trail down Grego's finely brushed trenchcoat, but it wasn't like he was keeping it entirely dry himself, standing out in the snow like this. He could have it cleaned later.

Diamond muttered quietly to himself as he watched the snow fall, another mannerism he had. In Grego's experience, it usually meant he was content. Sandra Glenn disagreed; she thought he'd picked up the habit of talking to himself out of loneliness. She often worried about him, having no others of his own kind that he saw regularly. The Fuzzies who had been captured along with him had moved back to Holloway's Camp; Ruth and Gerd thought that they'd adjust better to dealing with humans if they had some time to recover in a more familiar, wilderness setting, and they were backed up in this opinion by Rainsford and Brannhard. But Diamond wanted to stay with Pappy Vic, even after being given the option of going with his fellows.

Grego had experienced loyalty before, from men and women. But this kind of loyalty was a unique thing for him. It had nothing to do with money, with honor, with the regular ties of blood, obligation or sex that bound humans together.

He sometimes wondered if this was what having children felt like. But Grego always forcibly tamped down thoughts like that; it was demeaning to Diamond to think of him as a child. He might be short and furry, and he might not think like a human adult, but he _was_ an adult, and Grego would be damned if he'd treat Diamond with any less respect just because he couldn't stand face-to-face and look him in the eye without having to pick him up in order to do so.

He stood outside and watched the snow fall until he heard, distantly, the screen chime in the living room. That's right; Sandra had promised to call and let him know when she and Khadra got to his parents' veldbeest ranch. The snow was the least of the weather that the system had brought with it; there were heavy rains in some parts of Alpha Continent, and screaming winds in others. Grego gently let Diamond down, and went back into the warm living room, shaking off as much snow as he could and slipping off his wet shoes before padding over to answer the screen.

It wasn't Sandra, though; it was Holloway. "Mind if I come up?"

"Not at all." Grego overrode the security on the lift and went to fix drinks. Diamond vanished into the Fuzzy-room; Grego followed to the door, Scotch-and-water in hand, and saw that Diamond was still wearing the shirt, though he'd let it fall open in the warmth of the apartment and the neck-hole had slipped off one of his shoulders.

"You like that?" Grego said. "We can have some made in your size. Specially tailored for Fuzzies."

"Tayl'ehd?" Diamond echoed, sounding out the unfamiliar word. Another way in which he seemed to differ from most of the Fuzzies that Grego had met -- aside from Jack's Little Fuzzy and a couple others -- was his insatiable linguistic curiosity. Diamond was the first Fuzzy to have learned to talk in human-audible tones without the use of the "Fuzzyphones", and he continued to insist on having new words explained to them so that he could add them to his growing Lingua Terran vocabulary.

Grego was still trying to explain tailoring to a person from a culture without sewn clothing when he heard the lift arrive. Holloway's Fuzzies promptly piled into the Fuzzy-room, eager to see what new toys Pappy Vic had supplied for Diamond, along with a group of surprise guests -- Diamond's Fuzzy family, the one-time thieves of Mallorysport. Grego grinned as the Fuzzies greeted each other in raptures of joy, and then went to greet his human guest.

"Nice night to fly, Holloway. Trying to prove something?"

Jack snorted and took the proffered drink. "It was clear as a bell when I left Beta. I knew you were having a bit of a storm over here on Alpha, but I had no idea it was this bad. Next time I'll do my business over the screen."

They proceeded to get down to brass tacks, spreading out maps and discussing the boundaries of the sunstone mining area. In the middle of a combative but reasonably friendly argument, Sandra called to let Grego know she'd gotten in safely, aside from a few hairy moments in the storm. They were shortly interrupted again, when some of the Fuzzies came out of the Fuzzy-room to show Pappy Jack and Pappy Vic a rather eclectic array of new Fuzzy attire.

"Oh ... my," Grego managed. They'd completely torn up the silk shirt and refashioned it into bands knotted around arms and legs -- except for Diamond, who had kept the shoulders, collar, and upper part of the shirt intact and was wearing it that way.

The humans made admiring noises until the Fuzzies, pleased, vanished back to the Fuzzy-room in a flurry of happy chatter.

"Well, I suppose tomorrow I'll be finding a good tailor who's willing to take on the challenge of designing clothing for Fuzzies," Grego said.

Holloway sipped his whiskey, and studied the amber liquid in the glass rather than looking at Grego. "They don't need it."

"No, but they want it, and why not? Are you prepared to tell a bunch of adults that they can't have clothing because it's not traditional for their culture? If we all thought that way, we'd still be sitting around campfires in caves. Or would we even have bothered with fire at all?"

Holloway looked up from his glass; there was steel in the old man's eyes. "Lynne says in a generation we might be looking at a health crisis among the Fuzzies if we don't wean them off the Extee-Three. We're looking into getting supplements of the titanium salt they need, but explaining to them that they shouldn't have their favorite food when they can see crates of it in Pappy Jack's closet is a Nifflheim of a thing. I'm just saying we move fast, we humans, and the Fuzzies are getting caught up in that. Might be better to move slower, give them a chance to keep up without being run over."

Grego opened his mouth, and then closed it. He thought he knew whose ghost hung in the air between them. "We won't be having another Goldilocks, not as long as I have a say in it."

"You're so sure of that?" Holloway said quietly.

The tension stretched between them, cold as the snow outside. What broke it was a burst of canned gunfire from the Fuzzy-room -- either a screen-play or another of those games Diamond liked -- followed by a chorus of happy yeeking. The Fuzzies, at least, were getting along. Holloway drew a breath, sighed, and raised his glass. "To Goldilocks," he said.

The sentimentality was uncharacteristic of either of them, but nights like this made otherwise intelligent men maudlin. Grego clinked his glass against Holloway's. "May her memory live forever, and inform all that we do."

* * *

**4\. Guns**

It would have been a lot easier, Gerd van Riebeek reflected mournfully, to survey the sunstone mines before winter came to the Divide.

He had to admit that it was gorgeous up here in the mountains, though, with the winter sun dazzling on a crisp layer of snow. Ruth had shoved a pair of polarizing glasses into the pocket of his coat when he'd kissed her goodbye at Holloway's Camp that morning, and he was damn glad, because he'd be half blind without them.

The task of determining the boundaries of the Fuzzy Reservation Sunstone Mine #1 had fallen largely to Gerd by the process of elimination. The provisional government was stretched so thin that, with Jack increasingly tied up by adminstrative duties at Holloway's Camp, they simply didn't have anyone else. Gerd had an aircar and experience in the backcountry, so he was the logical choice. Jack didn't trust the Company to conduct the surveying -- they all might like Grego on a personal level, but professionally, none of them really trusted him not to take them for every sunstone he could get, if he could. In fact, they had quite a bit of trust in him to try to do exactly that. It was, Gerd thought, exactly what he'd do if he were in Grego's place: at the head of a once wealthy and powerful company that was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy if it didn't start pulling stones out of the ground on Beta again. And Grego had been happy enough to sit back and let the government survey the area. Why shouldn't he? Gerd thought sourly. This way, Grego didn't have to pay for the surveying. Maybe he wouldn't end up with as large an area that he'd like, but he was apparently more than willing to take the trade-off.

Gerd landed on a small outcrop overlooking the sunstone canyon. He was high in the mountains now, outside the area that they'd marked out, painstakingly, over the last couple of months, to hand over to the Zarathustra Company. Ben and Jack both wanted to make sure that there was no doubt at all about its boundaries, that every "T" was crossed, every "I" dotted. But they also needed to know how far the sunstone vein ran outside the area that they were leasing to Grego's people. Once the mine's existence became public knowledge, all of them fully expected a wave of illicit prospectors and fortune-hunters to rush for the Divide. George Lunt's NPF would have the thankless task of protecting the area -- the Zarathustra Company would handle security at their own mines, but all were in agreement that they didn't want Grego's jurisdiction to expand into the Reservation itself. And that meant they needed to know the areas in which to concentrate their security efforts.

The Fuzzies piled out of the aircar after him. Gerd had gotten in the habit of bringing various Fuzzies on the surveying trips -- partly to give them an outing, and partly so that they could act as interpreters for any strange Fuzzies who were encountered. Besides, it was their land and Jack felt they ought to be involved.

Today he had his and Ruth's Syndrome, as well as Jack's Little Fuzzy. Both of them were outfitted as befitted miniature Arctic explorers. Grego, for whatever reason, had begun sending down Fuzzy-sized items of clothing for the Fuzzies to test out, so these two were rigged out very smartly in tiny boots and simple, but warm, jackets, one blue and one red. Gerd knew -- because he'd been the recipient of more than one alcohol-fueled late-night bitch session -- that Jack didn't like it; the old man was worried about the Fuzzies becoming covetous and possessive, picking up human ideas of ownership, if they had too many goods introduced too quickly. But the Fuzzies loved the clothing, without showing any jealousy at all; they traded happily, and seemed to lose interest once the novelty wore off.

While the Fuzzies amused themselves in the snow, Gerd knelt and waved a handheld infrared wand to melt away a small patch of snow so he could dig into the soil and rock underneath. As he'd thought, he'd lost the seam of sunstone-flint. If he was lucky, it had petered out entirely, this high in the canyon. If not, then he'd just guessed wrong about how the geological forces of eons past had folded and shaped the rock in this area, and he'd need to pick it up again. Gerd sighed; he was a biologist, not a geologist. Though by now, he figured he'd probably learned enough about the rock formations in the Divide to qualify for an honorary degree.

Gerd looked over his shoulder at the aircar, sitting in a patch of contragrav-flattened snow and listing slightly on the uneven ground. He had a box full of geological charts in there -- everything he and Ruth had been able to pull together from the planetary surveys. The question was, should he go back to the aircar and study the charts, or climb down a bit and see if he could pick up the flint again by topical observation?

It really wasn't much of a dilemma. Gerd van Riebeek had always been a field kind of guy.

"Hey, guys," he called, waving to get the Fuzzies' attention. "I'm going down there," and he pointed down the rough and broken slope leading into the canyon. "Back soon."

He didn't have his hearing aid on and couldn't quite catch the Fuzzies' reply, but it seemed to be along the lines of "Yeah, whatever." The Fuzzies were on the trail of something-or-other, cheerfully following tracks through the snow. Gerd made a mental note to check out what they were tracking when he got back up top, and maybe take some pictures and castings. He might have been hijacked for geological purposes, but he was still a biologist at heart, and the Divide offered a wealth of biodiversity to explore.

The slope wasn't difficult to climb down, but it was treacherous, and Gerd soon found himself huffing and unzipping his survival parka. One thing about this damn geological survey -- it was getting him off his ass and back out in the field, which he hadn't been doing enough lately. The pistol at his hip was a constant nuisance in the thick brush, always catching and hanging up on things. Despite the hassle, he had too much experience with the Zarathustran wilderness to seriously contemplate leaving it back in the aircar.

He paused to take a couple more samples. Still no flint. He had a stunning view of the canyon, though. It plunged away beneath him to a twisting silver thread a couple hundred feet below. Farther down the canyon, that slender thread was a river, but this high in the mountains, it was nothing but a little stream. Hard to believe something that tiny could scoop out a formation so grand.

From here, he also could see the other side of the canyon a little better. The patchy snow and overgrowth of conifers made it hard to tell, but was that sunstone-flint? Gerd lifted his binoculars and took a look. Still couldn't tell; he'd have to swing the aircar around and see if he could find a place to land on the other side. Or maybe he'd just skim around, see what he could see from the air, and call it good. If claim-jumpers wanted to put in the time, risk and money to explore this rough country, they could do the work and Lunt's men could clean up later.

Satisfied, Gerd turned, and the blasted pistol holster caught on the undergrowth _again_. He was going to have to see about getting a smaller, sleeker model if he planned to do a whole lot of crawling around on hillsides, or maybe just a holster with a more streamlined shape.

Struggling to free it, he did the thing he'd been afraid he was going to do -- he overbalanced. The temperature was right around freezing, the patchily snow-covered ground abominably slick. Gerd's feet went out from under him; for a gut-clenching instant, he was suspended over the drop by nothing but the gunbelt. Then the buckle snapped under his weight, and he crashed into the brush under him. Gerd clawed at it wildly, knowing that he couldn't survive a drop all the way to the canyon floor. He was sliding out of control, and everything he could grab just tore out of the thin soil. In the process, he started a small avalanche -- brush, rocks, snow, all sliding down the slope with him, battering and bruising him. He tumbled, losing all sense of up and down. Something whacked him in the temple; Gerd didn't exactly black out, but things went star-filled and hazy. When he came back to himself, he was lying on his back with a tree across his chest and the clear blue winter sky above him.

Nifflheim.

He'd lost his left glove in the fall, and couldn't move his right arm. With stiff, half-numb fingers, Gerd groped around him, trying to assess his situation. His head was sloping downwards, adding to his disorientation. Eventually he managed to determine that he'd fetched up in a tangle of small trees that had stopped the avalanche -- and stopped him from plunging all the way to the canyon floor. Didn't mean he was in great shape, though. His back hurt, which scared him, and he was pretty sure his right arm was broken, which scared him more. He tucked his numb fingers against his neck, hoping to stave off frostbite since he had no clue where the glove had gone. He could feel freezing water seeping through the neck and cuffs of his parka.

He was so very screwed.

When would they miss him? Not 'til evening, maybe well after dark. They'd all been in and out of the Camp so much lately that they were criminally careless with radio check-ins. Gerd was used to working on his own, and everyone knew he was in the habit of staying out in the field until he felt the work was done.

"Unca Ge'hd?" "Pappy Ge'hd?" It was the Fuzzies, scrabbling down the slope. Naturally they had no trouble at all; they were small and light, and used to climbing. Still, he watched them nervously, his head twisted to the side in order to see them. The boots might make them clumsier than they realized. He was pretty sure someone Fuzzy-sized could survive the long drop into the canyon, but he certainly didn't want to test that theory.

"Hey guys. Pappy Ge'hd in big trouble."

"Pappy Ge'hd," Syndrome said, patting his face with small warm hands. Her eyes had widened until they were even bigger than usual for a Fuzzy; her breath came in short little puffs of steam.

Little Fuzzy crouched on his other side, quiet and solemn. "Unca Ge'hd, you do c'aym?"

In his addled state, he took a minute to figure out that Little Fuzzy was asking if he could climb. "No," he said. "No climb at all. You go get in the aircar and call --" Nifflheim ... the aircar would have automatically locked behind him. It would take his voicecode to open it. Even if the Fuzzies could figure out how to use the screen -- which was quite possible; they both could easily operate regular household communication and entertainment screens -- they couldn't get in. "No, forget that. Aircar locked, right? Lock. Damn it." He let his head flop back down and contemplated, once again, how completely screwed he was.

The Fuzzies argued with each other for a moment, then began checking him over with quick, busy hands. They found the broken arm. Gerd told them in no uncertain terms to leave it alone.

Syndrome kept touching the blood that he could feel hot and sticky down the side of his face. Inasmuch as it was possible to read a Fuzzy's alien expression, he thought she looked very frightened.

He didn't blame her.

There was more rapid-fire yeeking, then Syndrome left at a run. She was bent almost double, using both hands and feet to climb the slope. She wasn't gone very long, and when she came back into view, she was dragging something that Gerd, raising his head as far as he could, eventually realized was his pistol, attached to its broken gunbelt; Syndrome was holding the belt in both hands, dragging it.

Little Fuzzy left Gerd's side and went to join her. There was more arguing, and Nifflheim but he wished he knew what they were saying. He had an earpiece in the aircar, but didn't usually bother to wear it unless they encountered unfamiliar Fuzzies.

Little Fuzzy seemed to win the argument. He picked up the gunbelt along with Syndrome. She cast an unhappy glance over her shoulder at Pappy Ge'hd, and then the two of them began to drag the gun up the hill.

"Guys?" Gerd said to their retreating backs. "Hey! What's going on? Syndrome, _so-josso-aki! Bizzo!"_ _Give that to me. Come here!_

All he got was another sad look from Syndrome. The two Fuzzies toiled out of sight up the slope, and Gerd let his head clunk backwards in frustration. What were they up to?

The idea of Fuzzies getting their hands on guns was an elephant that had lurked in the corner of the room ever since Jack's original discovery of _Fuzzy fuzzy holloway zarathustra_. Zarathustra's weapons controls were extremely liberal (one might say almost non-existent), its justice system very much rooted in a frontier, eye-for-an-eye ideal. This meant that guns were ubiquitous and it was impossible that the Fuzzies wouldn't eventually develop an interest in them. Thus far, the Fuzzies had seemed content to leave guns to the Hagga, along with aircars and other items too large to be easily manipulated by child-sized hands. But it was really just a matter of time, and Gerd and Ruth had sometimes talked about it quietly, where the Fuzzies couldn't hear. Unlike Goldilocks' murder, where there had been active malicious intent, it wouldn't take anything other than natural curiosity for a Fuzzy to cause a tragedy with a firearm. "Human kids do it all the time," Gerd had said. "There was an accidental shooting in Mallorysport last month -- a five-year-old."

"They're not kids," Ruth had argued. "They're smart enough to know that guns are dangerous and they have a general idea how they work, even if they don't entirely understand the principles."

Sometimes Gerd thought that Ruth had far too much confidence in the Fuzzies' ability to determine what was best for them. It hadn't worked out so well with the Extee-Three, after all. But now he'd better just hope she was right.

The clear bark of a pistol nearly made him jump out of his skin. He banged his injured arm on the tree holding him down, and cursed roundly for a moment. Then he squinted up the slope as if staring hard enough could reveal whatever was happening at the top.

Had they needed the gun because of a predator? A harpy maybe? The sky seemed to be clear of avians, though. Not a damnthing -- surely his luck wasn't that bad!

Another pistol retort, then another. Gerd lay panting and sweating and wishing to all the gods he didn't believe in that he could get himself out from under this tree and get up there to find out what was going on.

One more shot came, and then silence.

Gerd continued to struggle uselessly against the tree until he heard small rustlings above him, and then he went still and quiet. It was just the Fuzzies, though, scrabbling down the hill at an unsafe rate of speed. They did not have the pistol. Gerd said nothing until they fetched up next to him, not sure whether to yell at them or give in to his overwhelming curiosity. Curiosity won. "Okay, what happened? What did you do?"

"Shotto ayokah," Little Fuzzy explained, staring at Gerd with his huge intent eyes. "_Aki-getto_ Pappy Jack."

Gerd thought he had to be going into shock, because they could not possibly be saying what he thought they were saying. "Did you say you shot the aircar?"

A lot more yeeking and some eloquent gestures finally got the point across. They'd shot the aircar door -- actually, the window in the door -- and eventually had produced an opening that a Fuzzy could crawl through, to use the screen.

Gerd was caught between stunned admiration, and tremendous relief that they hadn't accidentally destroyed the aircar's communications array in the process. Obviously they'd all seriously underestimated just how accurately the Fuzzies had observed the operation of firearms, because the pistol would have had its safety on, and they'd not only figured that out, but also figured out how to aim and fire it. Maybe it was time to put in some consideration to weapons-training a few of them; the idea that the Fuzzies might be able to share responsibility with the NPF for protecting the reservation hadn't occurred to anyone.

But first things first.

"You spoke to Pappy Jack?"

Little Fuzzy nodded vigorously. "Pappy Jack _he-bizzo_."

_Pappy Jack is coming._ Gerd laid his head back on the ice-covered tree trunk beneath him, and thought he might weep.

The Fuzzies curled up against him, their small bodies solid and warm, and waited with him until the blocky shape of Lunt's police cruiser blotted out the sun.

* * *

**5\. Family**

 

There was no snow at Holloway Camp, but it had been raining, steadily and sullenly, for close to a week.

"I guess the drought's over," Rainsford said, peering out the window of Jack Holloway's living room at the gray, muddy camp. "And with it, there goes the glut of land prawns."

"Come on, Ben," Gerd said. "I don't have to explain the difference between weather and climate, do I?" He'd staked out a prime spot on Jack's only decent couch, by virtue of his healing injuries. Lynne had let him out of her clinic with orders to take it easy, but he'd been back to work on the geological charts almost immediately. His face was almost as pale as the sling holding his arm to his chest.

"The point?" Ruth asked. Though her tone was arch, she was perched on the arm of the couch; she hadn't been far from her husband since Lunt, Jack and Lynne had retrieved him from the mountains.

"The point is that a few days of rain doesn't mean a reversal of a general climate trend."

Ben Rainsford turned back from the window with a "Gotcha!" look. "And two dry years doesn't mean that there _is_ a general trend, either."

Gerd raised his drink -- non-alcoholic, in deference to his painkillers -- with an ironic flourish. "Touche." He took a drink, leaning carefully across the Fuzzies in his lap (Id and Superego, at the moment) to do so. More Fuzzies were piled on either side of him and pressed up against Ruth. Ever since getting back from the mountains, Gerd had been very happily offering himself as prime Fuzzy napping territory, and handing out treats besides.

Jack privately thought it was interesting that Gerd was showing his favor to the whole Fuzzy tribe, not just the two who had rescued him. On some level, that was a deeply Fuzzy-ish way to behave -- the same way that Fuzzies didn't choose to keep something for themselves, but shared it throughout the group. Maybe he didn't need to worry quite so much about the Fuzzies picking up Hagga customs; maybe the Haggas were learning from the Fuzzies instead.

Jack smiled into his drink.

"Penny for your thoughts?" Ybarra said to Jack. He was sitting against the wall with his arm around Lynne. They had pretty much the entirety of the old gang here tonight -- Pancho Ybarra and Lynne Andrews, Gerd and Ruth, Lunt at the kitchen table and Rainsford holding up the wall. Brannhard was back in Mallorysport, though; Jack thought it would've been nice to have old Gus here too. But still, it was the first time in months that they'd all been together like this, without the screen going off every five minutes (Jack had unplugged the damn thing for a while) or one of their ever-growing bevy of assistants running in to ask a question.

Just as he was opening his mouth to say something sentimental he'd probably regret, the door opened and in blew Victor Grego with a sweep of rain. Grego was wearing a rain poncho with a telltale Fuzzy-sized lump at the front; Jack caught a glimpse of Diamond's golden head peeking out.

"Where'd you come from?" Lunt said, but not in an unfriendly way.

"Mallorysport," Grego said. He looked across the room at Jack, met his eyes squarely. "Figured it was time for me to stop waiting for you people to bring up Diamond's family to see him; the kid deserves some time with his people."

Indeed, the Fuzzies from Diamond's group were sitting up, one on the couch with Gerd and the other three sprawled in a lazy heap next to Ybarra and Lynne. Diamond's head popped out of Grego's poncho, and Grego let him down so that he could run to join the others.

"So, van Riebeek ... finished surveying my sunstone mine yet?" But Grego's eyes were twinkling.

Gerd told him where he could shove his sunstone mine.

"Sit down," Jack said, levering himself up to play the host one more time. "You flew out here in this?"

"Well, I can't let you have all the fun, can I?" Grego said lightly. He hung up the poncho by the door and accepted the drink Jack gave him, as well as a seat on one of the camp stools.

"There's a pot of stew on the stove," Lynne said, pointing at the kitchenette. "We've got in the habit of always keeping something around; there's usually someone coming or going."

There was an oddly uncertain look on Grego's face at this, as if he was wondering whether they were trying to poison him. He'd been out to the Camp a couple of times thus far, and each time Jack got the impression that, hidden under a mile-thick layer of self-assurance and charisma, Grego was still uncertain about the welcome he'd receive.

Well, Jack would be nervous in Grego's shoes, too, if _he'd_ tried to have the Fuzzies exterminated because they'd stood between him and profits. Still, the Fuzzies themselves were obviously willing to let bygones be bygones -- though Jack was fairly sure that they never had understood the magnitude of what Grego had tried to do; Goldilocks' murder was one thing, an easily comprehensible act of violence, but genocide was simply outside their ken. _Lucky little guys,_ Jack thought, knocking back his drink and pouring another.

But with Zarathustra Company in official partnership with the provisional government, that ship had sailed. The hatchet was buried, life's too short, all those cliches.

Grego finally appeared to decide that they didn't plan to try to kill him and headed into the kitchenette; Ybarra rose to point him in the direction of the stewpot and bowls. At the table, Ben Rainsford and Lunt had spread out a map of Beta Continent and put their heads together over it. Gerd and Ruth, on the couch, were engaged in a quiet argument about something or other; Gerd laughed and pulled her in for a kiss, to which she responded by giving him a peck on the nose.

Jack settled back down with a drink. Sleepily, Little Fuzzy crawled into his lap and dozed off again in a warm soft lump.

Sometimes Jack really missed having the camp all to himself -- being able to set his own hours, get up when he pleased, go work his diggings with all the elbow room an old prospector could hope for. But with all the work of the last few months, they'd really built something here, something that went far beyond the muddy and homely little frontier town that Holloway's Camp was turning into.

They'd built a future -- for the Fuzzies, and for themselves.

Life, Jack thought, was pretty damn good, and he drank to that.


End file.
